Why Mitch Can’t Have Nice Things

Can the GOP babystep away from Trump?

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Will the aftermath of Herschel Walker’s defeat in Georgia create a rare window for Republican introspection? And can the infotainment right be part of the solution? Sarah, David, Jonah and Steve also discuss what we know (and don’t know) about the Hunter Biden scandal, wonder what ever happened to the Electoral Count Reform Act, and catch up on what’s going on in the rest of the world.

Show Notes:

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Comments (33)
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  1. Hartzlk

    In all of the articles I have read (AP articles, mostly) about Griner's detention, I have heard far more about her having a wife than I have about travel warnings to Americans about traveling to countries with a known pattern of wrongfully detaining our citizens. Seems like a big disservice to the readers. It is very possible that the same sex marriage point was relevant because that status makes someone a more tempting target abroad. So say that. Connect the dots in order to better protect your readers who are in that category. Instead these stories read like the only thing that mattered was getting her home. No, it wasn't. It was indeed the most important thing, but it was not the only important thing.

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  2. Gbivone

    Maybe someone has brought this up before, but I would be curious to get more of a take on the idea that by doing the prisoner swap for Griner, Americans are now at a higher risk of potentially being taken into custody for "crimes" because of the precedent we have just set. My thought would be that it really puts celebrities or high profile Americans at a greater risk. As mentioned during this episode, we have a large number of Americans held in other countries that we have not gone to these depths to get back. Do y'all feel that we would have traded for Griner if she wasn't a celebrity? I know you could probably argue that if she wasn't a celebrity then she probably wouldn't have been detained in the first place, but I was curious to get your thoughts. Thanks!

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  3. Clark.Monson

    I wanted to yell at my phone as the gang discussed the Hunter Biden laptop topic. I'm not sure why the Dispatch team seems so deferential to the national security apparatus, but the real scandal in the Hunter Biden laptop saga isn't Twitter (their actions seem to have had a Streisand effect and there were plenty of other ways to read the story) and it isn't even so much Hunter Biden (though he's a pretty scandalous figure--I'm hard pressed to think of a more wastrel child of a US president). The real scandal is that 50 natsec figures signed a letter saying this had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation and that virtually NO ONE has held them accountable for that massive screwup. Look, I get it, fog of war and all that. Perhaps then it would have been best for these natsec officials to hold their fire till they had some hard evidence, or even reasonably grounded suspicions, that it was Russian disinformation. But they went in guns blazing, and while I don't think it really affected the outcome of the election at all, it was yet again another unnecessary intervention by current/former public officials in a US presidential election that undermines trust in the impartiality of the administrative state. And no one, not even the Dispatch team, seems interested in castigating them for it or holding their feet to the fire. There was a token nod to the signed letter and that it was maybe an overreaction, and that was it.

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    1. Aaron H Frank

      AND the FBI held regular meetings with Twitter telling them what to ban... You know, those people who ran the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

      Social media asked for and received special dispensation from content moderation on the grounds that 1) they were creating a new public square and 2) it was impossible.

      Apparently they are not and they can.

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  4. Aaron H Frank

    Candidate quality is a myth - sort of...

    If John Fetterman or Raphael Warnock had Rs after their names instead of Ds they would have been portrayed very differently on in all the major newspapers and all the major news stations except for Fox. And that makes a difference.

    Think about Mitt Romney who appears to be a very decent man. The Senator recused the Salt Lake Winter Olympics and ran what appears to be the only honest, major world sporting event perhaps in the history of the world.

    But he was portrayed as a homophobic, bullying, bigoted murderer who abused dogs. Again, and again, and again by major news outlets.

    Sen. Warnock was covered very differently by "The Washington Free Beacon". Even if they had it wrong their stories would be major stories had Warnock been a Republican. And Sen Fetterman - he was a mess before the stroke and that was ignored. The fact that he hid his condition for months was also ignored. All would have been grist for the mill had he been a member of the GOP.

    The MAGA right makes it easier but, when the press goes on for days about someone using "crudité" they're on weak ground.

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  5. Michael.Mcchesney

    The discussion of what it means to steal an election reminds me of something one of my professors said once. 35 years ago, I was taking a class at SUNY Albany about the History of American Foreign Policy through 1914. The class was given in a really large lecture center with several hundred students. The professor was super left wing and super boring. I mostly just sat in the back and tried to stay awake. But one day, the professor started talking about Richard Nixon and how he "fixed" the 1972 election. What that that had to do with American foreign policy prior to 1914 I couldn't tell you. But it did wake me up. His theory of how the election was fixed was that by covering up Watergate Nixon had assured his victory. I raised my hand and told him that Watergate wasn't fixing the election. Fixing an election was what happened in 1960 when dead people voted for Kennedy in Texas and Chicago. Not that I had any evidence for that. But my mother had told me on a number of occasions that many people thought the election had been stolen by the LBJ machine in TX and the Daley machine in Chicago, but that Nixon had refused to contest the election because that would be bad for the country. Again, I have no evidence of that either way. But imagine that, a presidential candidate refusing to contest an election because it would be bad for the country. That is why Richard Nixon was a far far better president, even with the Watergate coverup and resignation in disgrace, than the former Cheeto and Chief. The difference between them is that Nixon actually cared about the country while the orange grifter only cares about himself.

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    George.Skinner

    Hunter Biden is a drug addict, and I think people fail to put enough weight on the fact that drug addicts will do and say all kinds of things to feed their addiction. It’s extremely plausible that he’d lie about his influence with his father to keep things going. My guess is this’ll become another useless partisan show where Republicans never find any smoking gun showing that Joe Biden benefited or was even significant involved in his son’s dealings. It’ll put off independents, waste time, and drive the Republican fringe crazy because they’ll interpret all sorts of equivocal trivia as evidence of perfidy and fail to convince anybody outside their echo chamber.

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  7. LD

    The Bulwark has also been talking loudly and often about the importance of passing the Electoral Count Act. Hopefully those listening to you and the Bulwark will write their legislators.

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  8. Paulkempf

    I've read that Trump wanted his voters to vote in person on election day so that media election night coverage would show him ahead. This would allow him to declare that the election was being stolen from him if he should fall behind as the mail-in ballots were counted. Then the John Eastman strategy would kick in, Pence would reject electors...and Bob's your uncle! A Hail Mary strategy to be sure. But Trump's a gambler, and also he's so lacking in basic knowledge of high school-level civics that his understanding of how implausible was the whole caper was likely imperfect. From Mother Jones (sorry about the source; the story actually was covered on multiple platforms. This was at the top of what my query returned--thanks a lot, Google!--and notwithstanding Mother Jones's leanings, it coincides with my recollection with regard to the particulars):

    "On the evening of October 31, 2020, Steve Bannon told a group of associates that President Donald Trump had a plan to declare victory on election night—even if he was losing. Trump knew that the slow counting of Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots meant the returns would show early leads for him in key states. His “strategy” was to use this fact to assert that he had won, while claiming that the inevitable shifts in vote totals toward Joe Biden must be the result of fraud, Bannon explained."

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/leaked-audio-steve-bannon-trump-2020-election-declare-victory/

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    1. Paulkempf

      Fwiw, The Guardian also carried the story. However, their source is Mother Jones, so it may be that Mother Jones broke the story, and that subsequent coverage was based on its story. I certainly didn't read it there, but it may be that what I did read was based on the MJ story, so take it for what it's worth.

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/14/steve-bannon-audio-trump-declare-victory

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  9. Matt Foster

    Good ep! Love the product and all that you do. Thank you for all the hard work. My only comment is, there is only one person in the wrong and that's Putin. I hope my fellow Americans don't lose sight of that when we discuss this hostage exchange topic. No easy choices when dealing with evil and when we know it was designed to illicit the "bad trade" response. Good on any administration on bringing folks home and taking the lumps for it. We all know that if we had refused the 1 for 1 deal it would have leaked and the administration would be left explaining why we were firm on getting them both or none-at-all. Hard choices... and it's good that we continue to raise attention of Mr. Whelan - I hope it helps. I look forward reading all the Dispatch's coverage.

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    Christophe

    The NY Post was wrong to post the Hunter Biden laptop story, really? Surrpised to hear that take.

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      Seth B

      "Wrong" in the sense of irresponsible journalism. As Steve noted, the fishy smell of the laptop story (a blind computer repair guy gave it to Rudy Guliani?) led even the right-wing media's giants - Fox News and the Wall Street Journal - to initially reject the story as poorly sourced and implausible. In other words, they decided that it would be *wrong* to publish it.

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        George.Skinner

        Probably also important to consider that the *contents* of the laptop have been verified as genuine. That doesn’t prove that the story of how the Trump people got the laptop is true. Cloning a hard drive isn’t exactly rocket science.

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